About Me

By day, I perform strategic marketing duties for MorphoTrak (a subsidiary of Morpho, a subsidiary of Safran). By night, I manage the Empoprises blogging empire, as well as various virtual properties in Starfleet Commander and other games. Formerly known as Ontario Emperor (Ontario California, not Ontario Canada). LCMS Lutheran. Former member of Radio Shack Battery Club. Motorola Yellow Badge recipient. Top 10% of LinkedIn users.

Monday, October 31, 2011

While musing about Rebecca Black, I began wondering about the whereabouts of another teen sensation, Hanson. I knew that they had continued to make music, but I didn't really know anything else. So I chose one of their more recent songs, "Thinking 'Bout Somethin,'", and watched the video.

While the song and the video can be appreciated in its own right, it helps to know the back story behind the video, and the Ray Charles/Blues Brothers piece that inspired it (video).

Oh, and I stand corrected on one score - I had always thought that Weird Al Yankovic had directed Hanson's breakthrough video "MMMBop," but that video was actually directed by Tamra Davis. Yankovic has directed other work by Hanson, and he appears in "Thinking 'Bout Somethin.'" Taylor Hsnson (the middle brother and usual lead singer) said:

"We've known [Yankovic] since '98 and, small world, but he shot [the 1989 film] 'UHF' in Tulsa. Plus he's sort of the king of re-creating these pop-culture moments, so having him in it was almost like a blessing," Hanson said. "He was a consummate professional. He learned all the dance moves, got the wardrobe just right. He was great."

Thursday, October 27, 2011

As I was listening to the Butthole Surfers' version of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" (an instrumental, sadly), I began wondering about the melody of the song, which is not a traditional melody that you find in 1970s rock music. This led me to Wikipedia, which led me to an encyclopedia entry on "modes":

At one time, the only scale available had no sharps or flats - like staying on the white keys on the piano. This is still true of some diatonic instruments like the whistle or harmonica. It’s possible to play in other keys by simply moving the keynote, but the changes in the tone/semitone sequence result in a scale different from the expected major (the do-re-mis). These new scales are called modes.

It's impossible to explain to someone who isn't a piano player, so I'm not going to even try. Later in the entry, the following is stated:

Suppose you stay on the white keys of the piano and play a scale starting on a G note. Because the scale of G wants the seventh note (F) to be sharped, what you hear is a major scale with a flatted seventh. This is the Mixolydian mode, widely used in folk music and the usual scale for the dulcimer. "Old Joe Clark" is an example of a Mixolydian tune.

I'm not familiar with this song, so I can't comment. Later, the following is said:

The Dorian mode is of particular interest. It begins on the D note of the white keys. Tunes in the Dorian mode sound like a mix of major and minor scales, and never quite settle down to either one. The mode is equivalent to the major scale with a flatted third and a flatted seventh. A good example of the Dorian mode is Gordon Lightfoot’s "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".

So according to this page, the only difference between the Mixylodian mode and the Dorian mode is in the third note. In the Mixolydian mode, the third note is a regular major scale note - equivalent to the "mi" in "do, re, mi." In the Dorian mode, the third note is flatted. Other than that, the two modes are identical - flatted seventh, non-flatted for everything else.

It's clear that the seventh note is flat in "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." If you sing the first few words of the melody - "The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down" - the flatted seventh note is heard on "Chip."

But the melody doesn't contain the third note in the scale - in the simple melody of "Wreck," you can hear the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, and the aforementioned seventh note somewhere or another, but you never heard the third note.

However, you do hear the instruments, both for the chords, and for some of the guitar parts. And the dominant chord is always a major chord, not a minor chord...which indicates to me that the third note is NOT flat.

But why are others hearing a flatted third on this song?

Interestingly enough, even though pathguy says that "Wreck" is in Dorian mode, that page states that Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" is in Mixolydian mode. Actually, I hear a mix - "Sundown you'd better take care" sounds Mixolydian, but the "find you've been creepin' round my back stair" sounds Dorian to me.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

I certainly have guitar soloists that I like (Hendrix, Page, Clapton, Gore) and those that I don't care for (Eddie Van Halen). In those cases, the usual model is to have one guitar soloist, along with a backing band.

Don Felder, co-writer of the Eagles song "Hotel California," described how he conceived of the solos that he and Joe Walsh would play on the final recording.

“Every once in a while it seems like the cosmos part and something great plops into your lap,” says Felder. “That’s how it was with ‘Hotel California.’ I had just leased this beach house in Malibu and was sitting in the living room with all the doors wide open on a spectacular July day, probably in ’75. I was soaking wet in a bathing suit, sitting on the couch, thinking the world is a wonderful place to be and tinkling around with this acoustic 12-string when those ‘Hotel California’ chords just oozed out. I had a TEAC four-track set up in a back bedroom, and I ran back there to put this idea down before I forgot it.

“I set this old rhythm ace to play a cha-cha beat, set the right tempo and played the 12-string on top of it. A few days later, I went back and listened to it and it sounded pretty unique, so I came up with a bass line. A few days after that, I added some electric guitars. Everything was mixed down to mono, ping-ponging back and forth on this little four-track. Finally, I wound up with a cassette that had virtually the entire arrangement that appeared on the record, verbatim, with the exception of a few Joe Walsh licks on the end. All the harmony guitar stuff was there, as was my solo."

Only one problem - unless the song is an instrumental, you have to deal with a singer, and the singer's strengths and weaknesses.

"We worked it all up and went into the studio and recorded it as I wrote it—in E minor, just regular, open chords in standard tuning—and made this killer track. All the electric guitars were big and fat and the 12-string was nice and full. Then Henley came back and said, ‘It’s in the wrong key.’ So I said, ‘What do you need? D? F sharp?’…hoping that we could varispeed the tape. But he said no, that wouldn’t work, and we sat down and started trying to figure out the key—and it turned out to be B minor! So out comes the capo, way up on the seventh fret. We re-recorded the song in B minor and all of a sudden the guitar sounds really small and the whole track just shrinks! It was horrible, so we went back and tried it again. Luckily, we came up with a better version in B minor."

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

After talking about the Backstreet Boys and using the phrase "Bye Bye Bye," I interjected a bold comment:

WE INTERRUPT THIS POST WITH THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE TO 'N SYNC FANS. YES, I JUST INCLUDED AN 'N SYNC REFERENCE WHEN TALKING ABOUT THE BACKSTREET BOYS, AND I WAS WELL AWARE THAT I DID IT. SO DON'T MAKE ANY COMMENTS THAT READ "BACKWARD BOYS SUX" AND STUFF LIKE THAT.

Sadly for the reader, I kept on going:

WE AGAIN INTERRUPT THIS POST WITH THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE TO CLAYMATES. YES, I JUST MENTIONED TWO MUSICAL ACTS WITHOUT MENTIONING CLAY AIKEN. SO DON'T MAKE ANY COMMENTS THAT READ "CLAY IS THE SUPREME ENTERTAINER BAR NONE," BECAUSE BEFORE THIS POST IS OVER I'M GOING TO DRAG MICHAEL JACKSON INTO IT. SO THERE.

WE AGAIN INTERRUPT THIS POST WITH THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE TO ADAM LAMBERT FANS. YES, I FAILED TO MENTION ADAM LAMBERT BEFORE CLAY AIKEN, AND EVEN THE "SAVE THE BEST FOR LAST ARGUMENT" WON'T WORK BECAUSE I ALREADY SAID THAT I'D TALK ABOUT MICHAEL JACKSON LATER. DEAL WITH IT.

AND ONE LAST TIME - I PROMISE - WE INTERRUPT THIS POST TO APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE TO MICHAEL JACKSON FANS WHO ARE INCENSED THAT THE JUST-BURIED JACKSON IS NOT THE SOLE SUBJECT OF THIS POST. AND IT GETS WORSE, SINCE WHEN I DO FINALLY GET AROUND TO MENTONING JACKSON, I WILL DO IT IN THE CONTEXT OF ALL OF THE JACKSON BROTHERS EXCEPT JERMAINE. DEAL WITH IT. GO HEAL THE WORLD OR SOMETHING.

If you want to read the entire post, including my discussion of most of the Jackson brothers, go here.

But I'm going to partially rectify the lack of White-ness by devoting this post to one of the other songs on the album - the song "Can You Take Me Back."

Now if you consult the liner notes for the album, you won't find any song by that name. But if you listen to the album, you'll hear John sing the ending chorus of "Cry Baby Cry." Then you'll hear Paul sing a bluesy fragment. After that there is some very low conversation, followed by the words "Number nine."

Yep, sounds like my blogs.

Well, while the world at large has ignored "Can You Take Me Back," Alan W. Pollack has not. Pollack has published an analysis of the song, although he initially questioned whether he should do so:

"Can You Take Me Back" stands on the borderline for me in terms of whether it should be included in the official canon of Beatles songs. It's performed over a static single chord, presented to us in fragmentary form, and isn't even included on the printed track list of the album on which it appears. On the other hand you can't really argue that it is any less substantive or discretely distinctive than the other White Album fragments or bonsais that do appear on the track list.

Pollack provides a little of the history of the song:

The officially released portion of "Can You Take Me Back" was skillfully excerpted from a longer performance to isolate the best 28 seconds of the entire performance, and create the illusion that the remainder is as special; kind of like an artfully cropped photograph. What we experience as a haunting fade-out verse in mid-course of what we assume is a second verse turns out to be part of a dinky, complete ending coda if you bother to check out the readily available bootlegs of longer excerpts of the session.

And yes, even such a short song (as formally released) can cause controversy of its own, especially when some people think that the lyrics include "Robert" rather than "brother." Between that little misunderstanding and the whole "Paul is dead" thing, there are a number of interpretations of what this song actually means.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Well, this one was inspired while I was writing a post (which will subsequently appear in my Empoprise-BI business blog) that cited Al Yankovic's song "Dare to Be Stupid." In the course of research, I ran across a Mark Mothersbaugh description of a VH1 interview. Apparently the interviewer asked Mark about the band's most famous song, "Whip It."

We just did a VH1 thing. I made a joke, I had my 2 pugs with me and I got interviewed and kept referring to them as my whippets. Talked about cruelty in the animal world and the importance of recognizing animal rights. I just went off on that for a while. I got a call afterwards and they were upset. They wanted to know why I didn't do the interview right.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

I suspect that every new wave band, with the possible exception of Huey Lewis and the News, does not want to be associated with the term "new wave."

At the same time, there are a lot of so-called punk bands that probably don't want to be associated with punk.

Take Devo, for instance. They were probably an art project before they became a band, and my favorite Devo album happens to be their dance album. But at times, they exhibit the qualities of a '60s band.

Take the song "Gut Feeling," from their first full-length album. When you listen to the studio version, initially you think that you're on the campus of Kent State before any shots were fired. As the album version progresses, things start to fall apart and get faster and faster until you get to "Slap Your Mammy," which would give any punk band a run for their money.

But "Gut Feeling"/"Slap Your Mammy" wasn't created in the studio. The live version has a different take. This July 1977 performance is reputed to be the first live performance of the medley.

Now there's always a difficulty in reproducing Devo-like music live, which is why in later years they didn't. (I remember attending a Devo concert in Portland circa 1981 in which one of the guitar strings broke, resulting in no difference whatsoever in the overall sound.) And this live performance took place in a club environment. So it was obviously more difficult to emphasize the soft, "Dove the band of love" beginning of the song.

But the most notable thing about this version is the long introduction. The very long introduction. A three-plus minute introduction that is much longer than most entire punk songs of the time. An introduction that is as long as - are you sitting down? - the introduction to a progressive song. I'll grant that Rick Wakeman probably wouldn't have come up with this particular introduction, but it's almost a parody of punk - taking the same repetitive riff and playing it over and over and over. (Again, the...um, progression in the studio version of the introduction is entirely lost in the club version.)

One thing is common to both the studio and live versions - the wild guitar solo at the end of "Gut Feeling," followed by Mark's high-pitched screams. This, of course, is the antithesis of the '60s feel in the beginning of the song. Even in their wildest, drug-induced moments, Pete Townshend or Jimi Hendrix would never have played a guitar solo like this.

It starts off underneath a tree on the Kent State campus, on a nice peaceful afternoon (with no National Guardsmen present yet) with a hippie plucking the strings on his guitar, playing some mellow stuff. Then the bass player joins, sounding not at all hippie-dippie, but good nonetheless. Then you get your drummer (remember real drums?) joining in, and the mood gets a little repetitive and you realize you're NOT at Woodstock. Then your keyboards enter the picture, and the keyboardist's fingers keep on creeping farther to the right on the keys, finally slamming some chords to close out the instrumental portion of the song as the drumgs and bass and guitar get more frantic. A guitar chord slams in there, and Mark starts singing the most hateful and spiteful lyrics possible, as the song gets faster. And wait, the guitar is chugging along now, and things are getting faster and faster, and the drums are beating, and Mark is shrieking the second verse. Then he gets to the chorus, and what's the guitar doing here? Now we're in the noise realm, and things are clunky and junky and the hippies are slam dancing and I don't think the people at the coffee jazz club are going like this and now Mark's SCREAMING and they're starting a new song that's even faster and now Mark is just slapping mammies!